Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

Thomas Henry Huxley

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• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
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• Langue: English

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Sermons, Addresses and Reviews,
by Thomas Henry Huxley
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Title: Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews
Author: Thomas Henry Huxley
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Language: English
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LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES,
AND
REVIEWS.
BY
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1870.
LONDON
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,BREAD STREET HILL.
A PREFATORY LETTER.
My dear Tyndall,
I should have liked to provide this collection of "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and
Reviews," with a Dedication and a Preface. In the former, I should have asked
you to allow me to associate your name with the book, chiefly on the ground
that the oldest of the papers in it is a good deal younger than our friendship. In
the latter, I intended to comment upon certain criticisms with which some of
these Essays have been met.
But, on turning the matter over in my mind, I began to fear that a formal
dedication at the beginning of such a volume would look like a grand lodge in
front of a set of cottages; while a complete defence of any of my old papers
would simply amount to writing a new one—a labour for which I am, at present,
by no means fit.
The book must go forth, therefore, without any better substitute for either
Dedication, or Preface, than this letter; before concluding which it is necessary
for me to notify you, and any other reader, of two or three matters.
The first is, that the oldest Essay of the whole, that "On the Educational Value
of the Natural History Sciences," contains a view of the nature of the differences
between living and not-living bodies out of which I have long since grown.
Secondly, in the same paper, there is a statement concerning the method of the
mathematical sciences, which, repeated and expanded elsewhere, brought
upon me, during the meeting of the British Association at Exeter, the artillery of
our eminent friend Professor Sylvester.
No one knows better than you do, how readily I should defer to the opinion of
so great a mathematician if the question at issue were really, as he seems to
think it is, a mathematical one. But I submit, that the dictum of a mathematical
athlete upon a difficult problem which mathematics offers to philosophy, has no
more special weight, than the verdict of that great pedestrian Captain Barclay
would have had, in settling a disputed point in the physiology of locomotion.
The genius which sighs for new worlds to conquer beyond that surprising
region in which "geometry, algebra, and the theory of numbers melt into one
another like sunset tints, or the colours of a dying dolphin," may be of
comparatively little service in the cold domain (mostly lighted by the moon,
some say) of philosophy. And the more I think of it, the more does our friend
seem to me to fall into the position of one of those "verständige Leute," about
whom he makes so apt a quotation from Goethe. Surely he has not duly
considered two points. The first, that I am in no way answerable for the
origination of the doctrine he criticises: and the second, that if we are to employ
the terms observation, induction, and experiment, in the sense in which he uses
them, logic is as much an observational, inductive, and experimental science
as mathematics; and that, I confess, appears to me to be a reductio ad
absurdum of his argument.
Thirdly, the essay "On the Physical Basis of Life" was intended to contain a
plain and untechnical statement of one of the great tendencies of modern
biological thought, accompanied by a protest, from the philosophical side,against what is commonly called Materialism. The result of my well-meant
efforts I find to be, that I am generally credited with having invented
"protoplasm" in the interests of "materialism." My unlucky "Lay Sermon" has
been attacked by microscopists, ignorant alike of Biology and Philosophy; by
philosophers, not very learned in either Biology or Microscopy; by clergymen of
several denominations; and by some few writers who have taken the trouble to
understand the subject. I trust that these last will believe that I leave the essay
unaltered from no want of respectful attention to all they have said.
Fourthly, I wish to refer all who are interested in the topics discussed in my
address on "Geological Reform," to the reply with which Sir William Thomson
has honoured me.
And, lastly, let me say that I reprint the review of "The Origin of Species" simply
because it has been cited as mine by a late President of the Geological
Society. If you find its phraseology, in some places, to be more vigorous than
seems needful, recollect that it was written in the heat of our first battles over
the Novum Organon of biology; that we were all ten years younger in those
days; and last, but not least, that it was not published until it had been
submitted to the revision of a friend for whose judgment I had then, as I have
now, the greatest respect.
Ever, my dear Tyndall,
Yours very faithfully,
T.H. HUXLEY
London, June 1870.
CONTENTS.
I.
On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge.
(A Lay Sermon delivered in St. Martin's Hall, on the evening of Sunday, the
7th of January, 1866, and subsequently published in the Fortnightly
Review)
II.
Emancipation—Black and White.
(The Reader, May 20th, 1865)
III.
A Liberal Education: and Where to Find It.
(An Address to the South London Working Men's College, delivered on the
4th of January, 1868, and subsequently published in Macmillan's
Magazine)
IV.
Scientific Education: Notes of an After-Dinner Speech.
(Delivered before the Liverpool Philomathic Society in April 1869, and(Delivered before the Liverpool Philomathic Society in April 1869, and
subsequently published in Macmillan's Magazine)
V.
On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences.
(An Address delivered at St. Martin's Hall, on the 22d July, 1854, and
published as a pamphlet in that year)
VI.
On the Study of Zoology.
(A Lecture delivered at the South Kensington Museum, in 1861, and
subsequently published by the Department of Science and Art)
VII.
On the Physical Basis of Life.
(A Lay Sermon delivered in Edinburgh, on Sunday, the 8th of November,
1868, at the request of the late Rev. James Cranbrook; subsequently
published in the Fortnightly Review)
VIII.
The Scientific Aspects of Positivism.
(A Reply to Mr. Congreve's Attack upon the preceding Paper. Published in
the Fortnightly Review. 1869)
IX.
On a Piece of Chalk.
(A Lecture delivered to the Working Men of Norwich, during the Meeting of
the British Association, in 1868. Subsequently published in Macmillan's
Magazine)
X.
Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life.
(The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 1862)
XI.
Geological Reform.
(The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 1869)
XII.
The Origin of Species.
(The Westminster Review, April 1860)
XIII.
Criticisms on "The Origin of Species."
(The Natural History Review, 1864)
XIV.
On Descartes' "Discourse Touching the Method of Using One's ReasonRightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth."
(An Address to the Cambridge Young Men's Christian Society, delivered
on the 24th of March, 1870, and subsequently published in Macmillan's
Magazine)
LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS.
I.
ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL
KNOWLEDGE.
This time two hundred years ago—in the beginning of January, 1666—those of
our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath between
the shocks of two fearful calamities, one not quite past, although its fury had
abated; the other to come.
Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition
runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter months
of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the people of England, and
especially of her capital, with a violence unknown before, in the course of the
following year. The hand of a master has pictured what happened in those
dismal months; and in that truest of fictions, "The History of the Plague Year,"
Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking
through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a
silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the
woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of
despairing profligates.
But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly its ordinary
amount; a case of plague occurred only here and there